The best books to experience the Mediterranean like a 19th-century American

List by Lawrence A. Peskin

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Why am I passionate about this?

I am an early American historian who studies and teaches about America’s interaction with the world. I got interested in the Mediterranean when I started reading angry American screes against Barbary “pirates” who captured Americans and held them as “slaves” in North Africa. These events alerted me to a fascinating cast of American characters, many of them consuls on both shores of the Mediterranean who were involved in freeing the captives but also, I realized, were doing so much more to facilitate American commerce and shape national identity. They are the topic of my latest book!

The books I picked & why

The Innocents Abroad

By Mark Twain ,

Why I love this book

This is Mark Twain’s hilarious, grumpy account of his travels, mostly through the Mediterranean region just after the Civil War. Even though it’s over a hundred years old, I laughed out loud and found a lot of it to be still recognizable from my own travels.

But it’s also kind of disturbingly non-politically correct, raising lots of troubling questions for me, anyway, about how Americans looked at Catholics and Muslims.

The Innocents Abroad

By Mark Twain ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Innocents Abroad as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A beautiful edition with the formatting and all 234 images from the original first edition published in 1869. The cover is from an Antonio Joli painting of Rome. Use Amazon's Lookinside feature to compare this edition with others. You'll be impressed by the differences. Don't be fooled by other versions that have no illustrations or contain very small print. Reading our edition will make you feel that you are back traveling the Mediterranean with Mark. If you like our book, be sure to leave a review!

Published under the full name The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress, this…

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White Slaves, African Masters

By Paul Baepler (editor) ,

Why I love this book

Understandably even grumpier than Twain, for the most part, these Americans were held captive by Barbary “pirates” in North Africa and lived to tell about it. Their stories really got me interested in America’s interaction with North Africa on the southern edge of the Mediterranean.

They provide lots of drama, with ship captures, dark dungeons, descriptions of their Muslim captors, daily life in North Africa, horrific torture, and more. Needless to say, some of it has to be taken with a grain of salt, but there’s a good reason many of these accounts were bestsellers when originally published.

White Slaves, African Masters

By Paul Baepler (editor) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked White Slaves, African Masters as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Some of the most popular stories in 19th-century America were sensational tales of whites captured and enslaved in North Africa. This book gathers together a selection of these Barbary captivity narratives, which significantly influenced early American attitudes toward race, slavery, and nationalism. Though Barbary privateers began to seize North American colonists as early as 1625, Barbary captivity narratives did not begin to flourish until after the American Revolution. During these years, stories of Barbary captivity forced the US government to pay humiliating tributes to African rulers, stimulated the drive to create the US Navy and brought on America's first post-revolutionary…

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American history

The Barbary Wars

By Frank Lambert ,

Why I love this book

All those American captives in North Africa prompted the United States’ first overseas wars: The First and Second Barbary Wars. In turn, they led to still more captivity, not to mention “the shores of Tripoli” part of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Lambert’s is the definitive account of these events, and it is short and sweet, even if it places them in the “Atlantic world” rather than the Mediterranean world.

The Barbary Wars

By Frank Lambert ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Barbary Wars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Frank Lambert details America's nineteenth-century conflicts in the Middle East in The Barbary Wars.

The history of America's conflict with the piratical states of the Mediterranean runs through the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison; the adoption of the Constitution; the Quasi-War with France and the War of 1812; the construction of a full-time professional navy; and, most important, the nation's haltering steps toward commercial independence. Frank Lambert's genius is to see in the Barbary Wars the ideal means of capturing the new nation's shaky emergence in the complex context of the Atlantic world.

Depicting a time when Britain…

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American history

American Apostles

By Christine Leigh Heyrman ,

Why I love this book

Besides captives, missionaries were another major group of Americans who visited the Mediterranean. They worked in the Middle East (Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey) in what was, at least initially, a fairly futile effort to convert residents to Protestantism.

Heyrman does a fantastic job of humanizing two young missionaries and probing their views of the locals and of Islam. As a bonus, she’s written a follow-up describing a romantic triangle among the missionaries (Doomed Romance: Broken Hearts, Lost Souls, and Sexual Tumult in 19th-Century America).

American Apostles

By Christine Leigh Heyrman ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked American Apostles as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

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Coming soon!

Orientalism

By Edward W. Said ,

Why I love this book

Although I don’t always agree with Said, and he doesn’t really address the United States specifically, I find myself turning to his book again and again because he asks the crucial questions about western interaction with the Islamic portion of the Mediterranean region.

His questions can also be applied to Mark Twain’s interaction with Catholics on the European shores of the Mediterranean. Anyone discussing the Middle East seriously needs to be familiar with his approach.

Orientalism

By Edward W. Said ,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Orientalism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The seminal work that has redefined our understanding of colonialism and empire, with a preface by the author

'Stimulating, elegant and pugnacious' Observer
'Magisterial' Terry Eagleton

In this highly-acclaimed work, Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation - a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the 'otherness' of eastern culture, customs and beliefs. He traces this view through the writings of Homer, Nerval and Flaubert, Disraeli and Kipling, whose imaginative depictions have greatly contributed to the West's romantic and exotic picture of…

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